The Theme of Vocation: Introduction by Guest Editor Tod Bolsinger

“At this point in your journey, how do you envision your call to God’s mission in the world?”

“¿Cómo visualiza usted su llamado a la misión de Dios en este mundo?”

“당신은 세상 속에서 하나님의 선교로의 부르심을 어떻게 그리고 있습니까?”

The inboxes of my life are filled with material on vocation. I am not new to the subject. Indeed, since my days of graduate study with the late theologian Ray Anderson, the question of vocation has occupied me long past the realization of my own. Ray was the one who taught me the wisdom that I have often passed on to others: “There is no place or task on earth which can satisfy the restless hand which is not attached to the heart.” Decades later, I am the new Vice President of Vocation and Formation at the same institution that introduced me to that life-changing mentor. And, as of July 2014, my vocation is vocation.

It turns out a lot of people are talking about calling these days. My colleague Daniel Kirk shared this insight from Sam Wells: “Discernment of vocation is the identification of that form of service through which you will find perfect freedom.” Mark Labberton is the man who asked me to lead the discovery process around vocation and formation in the community at Fuller, and he knows well that freedom and joy are key markers in their pursuit. My “yes” was to something even deeper than the president’s request, however, or why would I leave the best job among the most loving people with the most beautiful ocean view on earth? Vocation.

Vocation is more than a job, it’s the voice that calls to the deepest part of your self, the thing that gives your life meaning because it is what God has created you to do. But a calling, to truly be a calling, is about more than just our own fulfillment. Because God “loves the world,” calling is always about the world too. Or as I have come to say, vocation is identity expressed in service to God’s mission in the world.

In the last year as I’ve been turning my attention to this challenge, a question has evolved: “At this point in your journey, how do you envision your call to God’s mission in the world?” The key word is envision. Calling is more about a vision than a title, more about a picture of oneself in the world than a title on the office door or a label on a business card. It’s more art than science. Readers will discover a sampling of answers in the following pages, along with several perspectives on the subject of vocation in a changing world. These will contribute to our ongoing conversation as we, together, attempt to discern and, with God’s help, answer the call on our lives.

“The idea that I would be called to something that’s not somehow embedded within my church community, that doesn’t arise out of my church—and out of ministry experience in my church—is really quite foreign to me. We tend to think of call and vocation as part of the experience of what you might call ‘us-ness’ or ‘with-ness.’ Wesleyan ways of thinking about church structure are deeply embedded in accountability; in meeting together; in conferencing, as we sometimes call it; in struggling together over issues. Vocation arises out of that.”

“In the main it is not by introspection but by reflecting on our living in common with others that we come to know ourselves. What is revealed? It is an original creation. Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter.”

“It is only when we are knit together that we ‘have nourishment from Him, and increase with the increase of God.’ Neither is there any time, when the weakest member can say to the strongest, or the strongest to the weakest, ‘I have no need of thee.’ Accordingly our blessed Lord, when his disciples were in the weakest state, sent them forth, not alone, but two by two. When they were strengthened a little, not by solitude, but by abiding with him and one another, he commanded them to ‘wait,’ not separate, ‘but being assembled together,’ for ‘the promise of the Father.’”